Exposure to prolonged stress is associated with an increased risk for mood disorders. However, only a small portion of those who experience such distress go on to develop these disorders, suggesting that individual and stress-related variables may increase the vulnerability to the damaging effects of chronic stress. Accordingly, the present series of experiments assess the influence of three factors on vulnerability to long-term exposure to chronic variable stress (CVS) in rats. In particular, we investigated the influence of gender, chronic fluoxetine treatment and early life maternal care on the behavioral and neuroendocrine response to CVS. The results from study 1 suggested that the direction of the behavioral and neuroendocrine response to CVS was in the opposite direction in male and female rats. Studies 2 and 3 revealed that fluoxetine treatment had a gender-dependent ability to reverse some of the effects of CVS, and this was mediated by increasing the rate of habituation to novel, acute stressors. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrated a gender-dependent effect of maternal care on behavior and the neuroendocrine response to an acute stress. In addition, maternal care influenced the impact of CVS exposure in a gender-dependent manner. The results suggested that maternal care affected coping processes in males and females that were expressed in different behavioral tests. Studies 5, 6 and 7 revealed that maternal care influenced the strength of associative fear conditioning to a context associated with shock administration, but did not influence conditioning to a discrete conditioned stimulus associated with shock. These results suggest that maternal care influences the strength of learned associations on a hippocampal-dependent task. Exposure to CVS eliminated the effect of maternal care on the strength of contextual fear conditioning. Thus, conditions in the post-weaning environment, such as CVS exposure, may reverse the effects of maternal

The aim of this doctoral dissertation was to examine effects of olfactory imagery on other sensory and perceptual processes, and to explore brain areas involved in generation of olfactory mental images. Four studies, three behavioral and one functional neuroimaging (Positron Emission Tomography, or PET), were conducted, and healthy volunteers participated in all four studies. In Study 1, participants were better at detecting weak odors when they simultaneously imagined the same compared with a different odor as the one being detected. This effect of olfactory imagery was specific, as the request to imagine objects visually did not have any effect on detection of weak odors. In Studies 2 and 3, effects of presented and imagined odors on taste perception were compared. Effects of imagined odors were equivalent to the effects of presented odors when an objective measure of taste perception (detection of a weak tastant, Study 3) was used, and comparable but more limited when a subjective measure of taste perception (intensity ratings, Study 2) was used. In Study 4, PET technology was used to investigate changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF) associated with odor imagery. Participants were screened and selected for their odor imagery ability, using the behavioral paradigm developed in Study 1. Increased CBF associated with odor imagery was revealed in several areas relevant for olfaction: the left primary olfactory cortical region including piriform cortex, the left secondary olfactory cortical region (posterior orbitofrontal cortex), and the rostral insula bilaterally. Interestingly, increased activity in the primary olfactory cortex and the rostral insula was observed both in the odor imagery and the odor perception subtraction. Based on the obtained findings, I concluded that the effects of imagined odors on sensory processes are specific when compared with visual imagery, and similar to the effects of presented odors. Furthermore, the neural

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1994. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-10, Section: B, page: 4604. Adviser: Nancy Gourash-Bliwise.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1994. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: B, page: 2321. Chair: Anita Greene.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1997. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-04, Section: B, page: 2931. Adviser: Mary R. Crittenden.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1996. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-07, Section: B, page: 4768.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1996. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-08, Section: B, page: 5332.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 2001. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 62-03, Section: B, page: 1632. Adviser: Amy Wisniewski.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Francisco, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 3173. Adviser: Adele Clarke.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1999. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 59-12, Section: B, page: 6487. Chair: Neil A. Massoth. Available also in print.